Quotes from Terry Pratchett

the Ankh-Morpork Trespassers' Society was originally the Explorers' Society until Lord Vetinari forcibly insisted that most of the places 'discovered' by the society's members already had people in them, who were already trying to sell snakes to the newcomers.

Did she help people? Miss Level added. ... ... She made them help one another, she said. She made them help themselves. ... ... Miss Level sighed. Not many of us are that good, she said.

You see and hear what others canna', the world opens up its secrets to ye, but ye're always like the person at the party with the wee drink in the corner who cannae join in. There's a little bitty bit inside ye that willnae melt and flow.

But at least the way was clear now. When you step off a cliff, your life takes a very definite direction.

There were a lot of things he could say. Son of a bitch! would have been a good one. Or he could say, Welcome to civilization! He could have said, Laugh this one off! He might have said, Fetch! But he didn't, because if he had said any of those things then he'd have known that what he had just done was murder.

Privilege (to the privileged) means having private laws.

Rincewind rather enjoyed times like this. They convinced him that he wasn't mad because, if he was mad, that left no word at all to describe some of the people he met.

Sometimes I dream that we could deal with the big crimes, that we could make a law for countries and not just for people

No point in imagining anything," said Granny. "Things are bad enough as they are.

All around him people were eating their unfood wih, if not actual evidence of enjoyment, then with no more actual disgust than was to be found in burger chains all over the planet. He stood up, took his tray over to the PLEASE DISPOSE OF YOUR REFUSE WITH CARE receptacle, and dumped the whole thing. If you had told him that there were children starving in Africa he would have been flattered that you'd noticed.

About a cookbook...) - What about this one? Maids of Honor? - Weeelll, they starts OUT as Maids of Honor...but they ends up Tarts.

I'm not cruel, sir, I won't shoot you in the guts, but I will make you realize how much you took your toes for granted.

She felt better for all that. A good shouting at somebody always makes you feel better and in control, especially if you aren't.

He was up against a mind that regarded truth as a reference point but certainly not as a shackle.

Things Just Happen, What The Hell

The city wasa, wasa, wasa wossname. Thing. Woman . Thass what it was. Woman. Roaring, ancient, centuries old. Strung you along, let you fall in thingy, love, with her, then kicked you inna, inna, thingy. Thingy, in your mouth. Tongue. Tonsils. Teeth . That's what it, she, did. She wasa...thing, you know, lady dog. Puppy. Hen. Bitch .

I'm just capable of entertaining the fantastic idea that, in certain circumstances, Homo sapiens might actually be capable of thinking. It must be worth a go, since we've tried everything else.

It was funny how people were people everywhere you went, even if the people concerned weren't the people the people who made up the phrase people are people everywhere had traditionally thought of as people.

Things like crowns had a troublesome effect on clever folk; it was best to leave all the reigning to the kind of people whose eyebrows met in the middle when they tried to think. In a funny sort of way, they were much better at it.

Om rubed his head. This wasn't god-like thinking. It seemed simpler when you were up here. It was all a game. You forgot that it wasn't a game down there. People died. Bits got chopped off. We're like eagles up here, he thought. Sometimes we show tortoise how to fly. Then we let go.

What some people need, said Magrat, to the world in general, is a bit more heart. What some people need, said Granny Weatherwax, to the stormy sky, is a lot more brain. Then she clutched at her hat to stop the wind from blowing it off. What I need, thought Nanny Ogg fervently, is a drink.

It had a very long pendulum, and the pendulum swung with a slow tick-tock that set his teeth on edge, because it was the kind of deliberate annoying ticking that wanted to make it abundantly clear that every tick and every tock was stripping another second off your life. It was the kind of sound that suggested very pointedly that in some hypothetical hourglass somewhere, another few grains of sand had dropped out form under you.

She prowled the city on moonlit nights, and OK, there was the occasional chicken, but she always remembered where she'd been and went round the next day to shove some money under the door. It was hard to be a vegetarian who had to pick bits of meat out of her teeth in the morning. She was definately on top of it, though. It was easy to be a vegetarian by day. It was preventing yourself from becoming a humanitarian at night that took the real effort.

WHAT FOR IS THIS BOX PADDED? IS IT TO BE SAT ON? CAN IT BE THAT IT IS CAT-FLAVOURED?